“
moved from May to September before cancelling. Others, like the
Festival d’été de Québec and the Halifax Jazz Festival, both originally
scheduled for early July, opted to cancel and shift their focus to a
2021 return.
“I really feel for promoters
and festivals who postponed
rather than cancelled,” says
Benjamin. “I say this because I
really understand the need to see
something on a calendar. We’re
looking at zero revenue. Zero rev-
enue. It’s impossible to imagine,
so just moving something on a
calendar, I think, maybe just helps
us deal a little bit better.”
This is devastating for the
agents, promoters, festival buyers,
CANADIAN LIVE MUSIC
concert venues, and so many oth-
ASSOCIATION’S ERIN
ers. At the heart of it all, though,
BENJAMIN
are the musicians – musicians
who had already seen their income from recorded music decline
severely in the digital era, and whose careers had become heavily
reliant on live shows. For the professional musicians with new music
released and a corresponding tour on the calendar, it’s especially
devastating.
Between March 20 th and 30 th , a survey went out specifically
for musicians that was spearheaded by Miranda Mulholland along
with Music Canada and CONNECT Music Licensing. Mulholland
has unique vantage points on the current situation as she wears so
many hats. Among them, of course, she’s an artist, and her group
Harrow Fair released its new album, Sins We Made, on April 17 th .
“We had a bunch of things planned touring-wise and we had
hired a U.S. radio promoter this year; I’d finally made something
radio-friendly!” she laughs to Canadian Musician. “We had some U.S.
tour dates and radio studio meet-and-greets planned as well. It’s a
pretty big blow to not be able to tour this record.”
In addition to being a professional artist, Mulholland is also an
indie label owner (Roaring Girl Records), festival organizer (Mus-
koka Music Festival), chair of Music Canada’s Advisory Council, and
an artist advocate who regularly lobbies provincial and federal
governments. “I felt like there needed to be something specifically
for musicians so that we could really get a sense of what that was
and try to get as clean data as possible,” she says of the artist impact
survey. “Unsurprisingly, it was pretty grim – 90 per cent had report-
ed cancellations, 84 per cent were going to require some significant
financial assistance, and people were turning to credit cards.”
The impact extends to all tiers of the musician community in
different ways. “I feel like another thing the survey showed is just
how precarious musicians’ lives are. It’s month to month and being
one gig away from eviction,” she says, but later adds: “It’s interesting
because I was talking to Alan Doyle [of Great Big Sea] and he has
some significant concerns about this. Obviously, you think that Alan
40 C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N
Doyle is, you know, Alan Doyle, but he had a full tour booked and
he’s got an amazing band that he pays what they’re worth, and a
crew and all the people he employs he’s worried about. His concern,
too, is rebooking the tour and hoping people will keep their tickets.
It’s interesting because he’s having the same problems, just on
a macro level, to the guy who plays the Dakota or the Cameron
House twice a week. So, different boat but same ocean.”
To further drive home the point with data from the survey,
Mulholland says artists employ an average of 3.7 people, meaning
every part of this catastrophe has tentacles.
“All those indie record stores, how are
they supposed to survive?”
“You really rely heavily on touring when you’re a label. We’re manag-
ers and we’re a label, so it works hand in hand,” says Britton about Six
Shooter. “For a band like The Dead South whose record came out in
October, one of their biggest markets is Germany and they still ha-
ven’t played in Germany yet. They were supposed to be there now,
but now they won’t be there for at least a year. That really changes
the sales in that country and, in fact, most of Europe they haven’t
been to yet. That is going to affect our physical sales, and streaming
is down when the band aren’t on the road.”
Not only that, streaming is down across the board. The initial
assumption for many was that with everyone at home all day,
streaming would skyrocket. That’s proved true for the movie and TV
services. Netflix reported a record increase in subscribers in April. But
it ignored how most people consume music.
“People listen to Spotify on their commute, at the gym, at the
office, and you can’t necessarily listen at home when you’ve got
family members who are sharing the space and kids at home who
are home schooling, or you’re on Zoom meetings,” explains Britton.
“So, basically everything is going to be down.”
The interesting exception is children’s music, which, again,
makes logical sense when you think about the current situation.
“Every morning I wake up and – no joke – I look at yesterday’s
streams,” reveals Moncada, saying that eOne Music’s “not insignificant
cache of children’s music” has been one of the company’s few bright
spots during the pandemic. In normal times, Moncada says streams
for popular genres – pop, rap, rock, etc. – will climb through the work
week and spike on Fridays when the new releases come out.
“Then on weekends there will be a dip because routines are
interrupted. The commutes aren’t happening, maybe you’re not
going to the gym that morning and so on and so forth,” he says.
“For children’s music, it’s reversed. So, you’ll see a spike on Saturdays
and Sundays and then it flattens during the week.” Ever since about
March 13 th , he reveals, streaming for both popular and children’s
music has stayed at weekend-type levels.
But while streaming is now the engine of the recorded music
market, physical music is still a worthwhile chunk of a label’s yearly
revenue. In 2019, according to Nielsen Music, 5.5 million CDs and
one million vinyl records were sold in Canada. But as of late-April,
CD sales in Canada were down 46.5 per cent over the same point
last year, and vinyl was down almost 30 per cent. The pandemic,
labels worry, may be a lethal blow to the physical music market.
“All those indie record stores, how are they supposed to
survive?” Britton asks. “A lot of the major artists have held back their
releases and I am sure for a lot of the record stores, the big releases
are their bread and butter.”